Who Should NOT Get the Flu Vaccine?

By Jeffrey Kopman

Published Jan 29 2014 04:21 PM EST

weather.com

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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends nearly everyone receive the flu vaccine. This includes healthy adults, children, seniors and even your outspoken uncle who swears the flu shot literally gave him the flu (it didn’t). All of these people should receive the flu shot at some point between September and April.

Bruce Hirsch, M.D., infectious disease specialist at North Shore Long Island Jewish Hospital in New York, agrees with the CDC’s recommendations.

“We really think that more and more people should get a flu shot,” he told weather.com. “Although it’s not fun to get stuck, and to get a flu shot, it’s really not only helping a person’s own health, but the health of people around us.”

The flu vaccine is not 100 percent effective, but offers the best protection against the virus and the harmful effects of the virus. Even the least vulnerable group, healthy adults ages 18 to 64, should receive the vaccine. A recommendation that many younger adults seem to be ignoring, even though this year's flu season hits younger adults particularly hard.

Last season, 56.6 percent of children, 66.2 percent of seniors and only 35.7 percent of younger adults received the vaccine, according to a recent report from the nonprofit organization Trust for America’s Health.

The 2013-2014 flu season has been noteworthy for the emergence of the H1N1 strain (also known as swine flu). This strain targets all people, including young people — increasing the importance of increasing vaccination rates amongst younger adults.

“This season — unlike few others — we’re seeing this H1N1 flu cause viral pneumonia in and of itself and causing an occasionally fatal flu in young adults who would not be otherwise vulnerable," Bruce Hirsch, M.D., an infectious disease specialist at North Shore Long Island Jewish Hospital in New York, recently told weather.com.